


Porcelain Girls

by KanaRika



Category: Original Work
Genre: Allegory, Fantasy, Fantasy setting, Gen, Introspection, Mentions of War, Minor Injuries, Original Characters - Freeform, Original work - Freeform, Serious Injuries, Tattoos, War, growing up to fight a war you didn't ask for, perfection, unfair standards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:15:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28705023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KanaRika/pseuds/KanaRika
Summary: Everyone knew that Men of Steel were bound for politics, just like everyone knew that Porcelain Girls would be drafted. Porcelain girls are suited for war: beautiful, deadly, easily fixed. Easily replaced.Marguerite didn't ask for this. She remembers stories of respect Porcelain Girls and their beauty used to have before King Praseodymuim declared a never-ending, petty, War. She just wants to break and to stay broken.Reyne didn't ask for this. She just wanted to be worth something, to have her father say he was proud.
Kudos: 2





	Porcelain Girls

**Royal decree #341**  
For far too long, the Glass Kingdom has been acting without regard for their actions.  
Our towns have been ransacked, our people have been kidnapped.  
It all ends now!   
As of 8 O’clock this morning,  
On the 18th day, of the third year, of King Praseodymium’s reign,  
A59 has declared preemptive war on the Glass Kingdom.

 **Royal decree #342**  
All Porcelain girls are subject to aptitude testing as well as military appropriation.  
These girls will be trained to become the pride of this kingdom.  
It is a high honor, and all families will be handsomely compensated.   
Thank you for your contribution to the war effort.

“Faster!” the Commander yelled, his voice ringing in Marguerite’s ears, “Harder! Good Porcelain Girls don’t complain! Good Porcelain Girls earn the air they breathe! Good Porcelain Girls don’t crack at the slightest breeze! Good Porcelain girls kill the enemy and don’t shatter!” But Porcelain girls were made to shatter; to crack. If they wanted someone durable, then she thinks they should have rounded up the Men of Steel. But everyone knows that Men of Steel are meant for politics, meant to rule. They’re rare and should be coveted. Porcelain girls are easily fixed and easily replaced.  
  
Sometimes, Marguerite can hear stories. Stories about a time not all that long ago, before this never-ending war. It seems there's always a new reason for war: a peasant hit by a wagon and put into a coma, someone on a border town used alchemical currency and it turned back to dirt a day later (must have been sabotage she’s heard them whisper), a forest fire spread from the Glass kingdom into A59. Because of the war, there was always death, pain, an ever-rotating circle of girls coming through the barracks on the edge of town. Their Porcelain skin stiff and drawn, the bold blood red of their painted lips stark and bright against their pale skin and dark uniforms. 

In the stories though, there weren’t any wars. There weren’t any barracks filled to bursting with frightened, cracked, and chipped little girls. Back then, Porcelain girls were a showpiece for A59, beautiful and exotic. They were the kingdom's pride.

Old women talk about how their grandmothers would sit on their stoops and recall when the King first realized how easily Porcelain Girls could be fixed. A little extra porcelain here, a bit of glue there and it was like they were good as new. Damaged, but they could still go about living their common lives. It made her stomach turn. 

They weren’t like humans, they didn't have the bodily intricacies; blood that could splatter onto the floor, the innumerable amount of diseases a human could come down with at the drop of a hat. Porcelain girls didn’t have organs that would simply stop working. They were a perfect army.

The funny thing about a king learning something new about his subjects is that he very rarely uses it to benefit said subjects. More often than not, he hurts them, more than they could ever imagine. So, when he learned that Porcelain girls, the very girls that walked the streets, made businesses in town, tended to children, and taught in schools, could simply...keep going after they had been hurt, with little to no recovery time. Well, he just couldn’t help himself.   


* * *

“Is this one of them?” Praseodymium asked, looking at the small fragile-looking girl out of the corner of his eye. She looked so much and at the same time not at all like Reyne. Their red hair made his blood boil. He’d never seen a Porcelain girl before; all he knew was that they were beautiful, exquisite, almost like a doll. 

  
“Yes, Sir. We had always treated them carefully worried about breaking them but one of our informants just said they could be fixed with clay and metals, almost like they aren’t alive at all” The attendant fumbled over his words, he wanted to finish the report and leave. The King sent shivers down his spine like he was being appraised, judged. He watched anxiously as his King hopped off his desk, standing regally, looking down his nose at the small girl. A small smirk and wrinkle between his eyebrows crossing his face was the only warning before he roughly backhanded the Porcelain girl. She cried out as her temple hit the edge of his mahogany desk. She froze for a second in shock before reaching her shaking fingers up to inspect the damage.

“W..Why?” she asked, voice shaking, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. 

“Hmm” he looked down at her, almost thoughtful if not for the disdain hidden behind his eyes, “Call it an experiment. Bring me ten more and try to fix her while I _play_ with them.” Praseodymium learned in the Academy that he couldn’t beat Reyne with half baked effort. He had to know everything and utilize all the tools he had at his disposal. Reyne was strong, she could probably take anything he threw at her, but with a never-ending army? Anyone would get tired, he could be patient. Her people would lose faith and her country would crumble around her, their strong and foolish queen. She would learn that she made a mistake thinking she was better than him. He would send out an army of dolls with him as their puppetmaster. 

* * *

After years of being rounded up, trained, and sent into battles the girls started to pride themselves on clean knuckles. The lack of impurities made Marguerite feel like they had less blood on her hands. Even if the spiderwebs of remodeled splinters across the rest of her skin would beg to differ. 

Every now and then, a man of Steel would walk by their barracks. Stopping to jeer at the girls. Ask why they broke so easily, grab a Porcelain arm, and watch as hairline fractures created a maze it's the surface. They said that girls who broke so easily shouldn’t be soldiers; for how could someone broken save anyone else. Marguerite couldn’t help but agree.

The Girls learned how to do everything: they could ride horseback, dance ballet, and perform gymnastics. Shoot arrows, and wield swords with deadly accuracy, throw projectile weapons. They knew enough chemistry to know and recite the ins and outs of basic poisons along with their practical applications. They were beyond spectacular, and part of them knew it.

Every now and then there would be whispers of rebellion, of what could be if they tried. They could poison their commanders, flood the drains with the bodies of those who had made them, they could topple the empire. 

But those thoughts always broke down quickly, because everyone knew that no matter how deadly a porcelain girl might be, she was still fragile, she broke easily, and without the ‘healers’ to fix them back up, they would be no more important nor valuable than broken vases. 

Marguerite never stood out, she never wanted to. Her older brother told her that her parents cried when she was born. They hadn’t wanted a girl, they hadn’t wanted a Porcelain girl. She liked to think they didn’t want their child to be taken away from them. That they loved her so much that the idea of her being taken away moved them to tears. But she was never sure. 

The only things she was ever certain of, were the things she was strictly told. She was told that her value came from how well she did. That if she broke too easily she would be discarded. That she needed to be strong regardless of her porcelain skin. Of this at least, she was certain. 

It didn’t matter that her Porcelain skin, teal eyes, and rosy red lips had once been coveted. That she had once been beautiful and enchanting, or that she had once dreamed of something else. Of individuality, of prosperity and fame, of being someone who mattered. What mattered was that she could shatter and still easily be put back together; even if only physically. Her mind could be in tatters and even it wouldn’t matter because she looked fine. She had her horse and her blades, she could twist and twirl through an ocean of enemies, her black hair twirling around her, and come out of it with barely a scratch on her skin. Marguerite learned quickly that if she wanted to avoid a trip to the healer and looking at new colors afterward, then first she needed to avoid an enemy’s blow. 

Marguerite remembered when she had first been drafted. When the Men of Steel came to her house and made her do a series of exercises. Running up and down the street, trying to tag them without them noticing, stretches to determine her flexibility. Her poor four-year-old body was not ready for any of it. All of her ached and screamed. Lungs burning she gasped, they wouldn’t expand as much as she wanted, breathing began to feel truly impossible. She wanted water, but her mother made no motion to bring her any. It was the first time she felt truly alone. 

Later she sat strapped to a chair in a room that smelled of ink and disinfectant. A human came up to her, quietly apologizing before bringing the tattoo gun to her face. Everything screamed, her eyes started watering. A sharp sting on her fingertips made her eyes search wildly for the source. The Man of Steel that brought her in looked down at her in disdain, sharp stick in hand as he said “You will not cry and ruin your barcode. If you do I will only hurt you more” she bit her tongue trying to stop her tears from welling up. She focused on the quiet hissing the machine-made as the space behind her eyes started to burn. It was nothing in comparison to the torture the man’s eyes promised. 

Her first few years left her with clay-filled arms and legs, her stomach started roiling the second her eyes brushed over the figure of the healer. He helped, she supposed, fixed her. But it always felt the fixing was temporary and futile, a bandage over a hole in a dam. 

Marguerite expected much from the military. Any hope just meant more to lose. So when she came back from a mission, ten years after being drafted, carrying her sliced off arm - trying not to remember the pain in the eyes of the woman who hacked it off to begin with- and limping and trying not to put pressure onto a clearly fractured leg, part of her thought they would finally get rid of her. Or maybe, they would let her get patched up before sending her back to the barracks for the clay to harden.

She was escorted into the healer’s wing, filled with men in white lab coats coated in red-brown clay with silver flaking off onto the black floor. When she was pulled into the furthest room and presented to a healer she hadn’t met yet, she was surprised by what he said. 

“Fix her” the escort demanded; putting a bit of pressure on her remaining arm. She automatically extended the detached one to him so he could figure out the best material for the repair. When he took it she used her single hand to unclasp the knife from around her thigh and place it on the floor. She didn’t want to intimidate the man who was there to help her regardless of how much her body rejected giving away the meager protection.

The man looked at Marguerite’s arm and then her crumbling leg. Taking in the filled cracks that made a lace net across her body. If she didn’t know better she would think he was on the verge of tears. 

“No” he whispered looking at the floor.

“Because you can’t? Or because you won’t?”

“Because she’ll break again, and then you’ll be back here again asking me to fix something that was never meant to be broken so badly in the first place, that was never meant to be fixed to this extent” 

“So you don’t want to”

“No,” he replied, his eyes cold, finally glaring down her escort. She had to lean on a nearby chair. She felt like the bandage had suddenly been ripped off the dam, she had to hold back tears for the first time in years. Someone understood. Someone understood that even if she looked fixed that didn’t mean that she was. That she still felt broken. That she never wanted to break so badly to begin with. A small, sad smile slid over her face, the rosy red of her painted lipstick glossy despite the cracks that marred her face. She closed her eyes and reveled in the subtle feeling of being understood. And for the first time in a very very long time, she let herself be broken. She collapsed onto the floor, only one person reached to stop her. 

* * *

It felt like hours since Reyne had returned from the battlefield. Attendants flickering about babbling, all of it going over her head; she would ask about it later; after she slept and felt more like herself. Falling onto her bed melting into a cloud after so many hours on horseback. She tugged at her white cravat, unpinning the shiny golden brooch and setting it in the blankets beside her. A part of her was anxious to sleep while she could, alone, in the safety of her room. The other part knew that falling asleep in uniform was disgraceful, even for -especially for- a queen. So, she stood, shaking the numbness and pin pricking pain out of her limbs. 

Her eyes looked so tired in the mirror, the scars on her face, over her nose, and under her eye, did nothing to hide the exhaustion that drew dark purple bruises beneath her eyes. She brushed the hair from her face, not for the first time wishing she had either cut it better or at least shorter. Stripping out of her coat first she watched as Porcelain dust poufed up like a cloud as the garment hit the floor. Her eyes stung. Next, she reached for the cuff links of her rumpled white button-up. Reyne had felt the large chunk of Porcelain pushing at her skin since she sliced through the arm of that soldier earlier today. It had felt like cutting through herself, the look in that soldier’s eyes was the same as the one that stared back at her in the mirror. They were both broken. She couldn’t help it as saltwater dripped down her face, curling up and taking the piece into her hands she couldn’t find it in herself to do anything but mourn. 

Mourn for a life where neither of them were broken. Where her father’s voice didn’t echo through her head, demanding nothing less than poise and perfection. Where that girl wasn’t fighting a war she didn’t ask for. Where the men in power didn’t use girls as trophies and weapons. 

She remembered the first day of Academy, where she had sat across the table from the then prince Praseodymium. He practically oozed arrogance, Reyne could tell he thought he would be the best, thought he could make it through without effort, simply riding the coattails of his parents’ successes. He made her stomach roil. His smile looked too much like a smirk, like he thought he was above everyone else in the room simply by virtue of birth. His smile reminded her too much of her father. 

Her father who sat her in front of a chessboard blindfolded at age four. He said that in a real war you don’t see where the enemy is. 

Her father who kicked her feet out from under her at age four. He said she needed to be more stable, be better or she would die the second she stepped up to a real fight. 

Her father who took anything less than perfection as a blight on the family’s honor.

Her father who whipped her back when she wasn’t good enough and didn’t let her sleep until she had memorized every strategy and could recite the history of every neighboring country. 

After the mid-term assessments, she could feel his eyes on her, she couldn’t look at him. She knew he would look angry, look just like him, she refused to cry in the middle of the lunch hall. He tossed her into the wall later on.

“Do you think you’re better than me!?” he screamed, her face growing damp with his spittle.

“Do you think that you’re just so perfect!? So perfect you don’t even have to look at me!? Do you think you’re above me!?” he didn’t give her room to reply, shoving her again before walking off getting loose a string of curses and threats. Reyne’s back was bruised, she reached under her tunic trying to assess the damage. Her fingertips grazed over the ridges of scars and pressed lightly on her spine, wincing at the radiating pain. She would survive.

  
Her archery teacher yelled at her the next class, the professor accused her of not trying hard enough. The teacher was right of course, Reyne didn’t want it pointed out though. She could feel Praseodymium’s hot fury on the back of her neck; she wanted to blend in, not stand out. Pinching herself to bring her back into the moment she lifted her bow picking an arrow from the pouch at her side, nocking it into place. She paced down the archery hall, every student’s gaze following her form as she loosed 5 arrows into the bullseye's targets a 100 meters away. Someone whistled, the prince seethed as she sent her final arrow straight through the center of his own. “Much better” the teacher commented, she wanted to punch them.   
Her father taught her to shoot a bow when she was 6, he made her loose arrow after arrow until her uncalloused fingertips bled. Then he made her shoot twenty more. She couldn’t look at her first bow without feeling the need to vomit at the sight of her own blood staining the bowstring. 

  
Their entire stay at the academy continued in the same pattern. Her trying to fade away, everyone else forcing her into the greatness her father forced upon her through excruciating training, the prince thinking it was talent, the prince cursing her name when he saw it at the top of the ranking list, right above his own. By the time they left he had four years worth of hatred, and she had an empty castle to return to. 

Everything was fine for seven years, the prince hadn’t become king yet and she had distinguished herself as the queen of the glass kingdom. Things ran smoothly and her people were happy, she almost allowed herself to be happy too, but she knew it was only so long before the other shoe dropped.

  
It dropped. Subtly but dropped, all the same, buried in piles of reports eventually she learned that A59 citizens would cross the border and attack her people. The complaints stacked up, death tallies rose. She couldn’t find a cause. Throwing herself into essay after essay she looked for something that could make A59 look on her people with resentment, she couldn’t find anything. Reyne was on the verge of breaking as her people stood outside the gates crying for an explanation she couldn’t give. Then the letter arrived, a declaration of war, Praseodymium had taken the throne and he was declaring war on her. She couldn’t help but remember all those times he fumed at her back and swore he would get her back for daring to be better than him. She had dared be better and he was going to make both of their people pay the price for it. 

  
Reyne stood in front of her people, she told them that A59 declared war. She told them they had a battle ahead of them. She told them that she believed in every last one of them, she asked for volunteers. Sometimes she could walk past the training areas and find friends joking and cooling each other into an extra round, one more fight, one more match. It made her smile, her people hadn’t given up just yet. 

  
Thirty years later she could see the spark fade from their eyes as the war kept going. The king found a new reason every day it seemed, his army never died, their blank Porcelain eyes haunted her. His Porcelain girls were an undead army. 

  
She sat in front of the mirror and remembered the hoards of broken tired girls, girls just like her, forced to fight a meaningless, petty war they didn’t ask for. She mourned for the lives they could have led. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story I wrote for my creative writing class, and everyone in the class said I needed to share it, so I figured I would. Largely it's about injustice, about being a girl or even just being a human who is thrown into something they're not suited for. I lost count of how many times my brother heckled me as a kid for not knowing how to change a tire as I sat there and thought "but nobody taught me, nobody helped me, I was prepared to cook, clean, and manage a household. not to do these things, what do I do" or how many times I felt like I could be broken inside but as long as I was outwardly okay, nobody cared. I feel like a lot of people can relate to that idea and I wanted to put it into an easily accessible format that words it so people understand. 
> 
> Reyne and Prraseodymuim's parts were written in a revision and I really like Reyne's, it was something I could relate to a lot because my own father wasn't the best but it's kind of about always working hard and being pushed to our limits and other people thinking we just have talent. Seeing the results and not the pain and anguish we put in to get there. Similarly, it's about lazy people who game the system or feel entitled who then get angry when someone with hard work does better than they feel entitled to. I have a friend who has a higher gpa than me and I work hard for mine while he does drugs, messes around, submits things late, and just gets the teachers to like him so he gets good grades, or he only takes easy classes he know he'll do well in and it frustrates me to no end because it almost feels like "what's the point of working hard". So I kind of wanted Reyne's hard work to pay off and for her to do better than the king a little out of spite and a little because I feel like we aren't shown how much of a difference hard work can make. 
> 
> The king's part was hard to write, I sent my friend a text saying "How do you write from the perspective of a douchebag asshole fuckboi entitled rich kid with a god complex?" and she replied "Very carelessly and like you don’t care about human rights? Write like you believe women are objects that you can buy" so that's what I used to guide his section, I think it comes across pretty well but also I don't often write from the perspective of a male person and I am a very sapphic person so idk.


End file.
